It was day when Jonas awoke, but he was too confused for a few instants to realize that the light was slanting through the tree-tops from a different direction, or that there was more of it than seemed normal in an evergreen forest. When his wits returned sufficiently to permit the comprehension of the fact that it was morning, he began to notice other things that were equally singular. He found that he was lying on his back among burnt needles, and above him towered the dark boles of fire-swept trees with the pitiful stumps of their cauterized branches. Darkly, indistinctly, in a sort of dull astonishment, he began to remember the events of the previous day, his return at sunset to the cabin, his glimpse of Matilda and the two children, and the all-engulfing sheet of flame. He looked instinctively at his clothes, with the feeling that he must have been badly burnt; but there was no trace of fire on his raiment, and the black ashes about him were cold. Nor, when he reared himself on his elbow and peered around, was there the faintest thread of smoke to indicate a recent conflagration.
He arose and stepped towards the place where the cabin had stood. It was a heap of ashes, from which protruded the ends of charred beams.
‘My God!’ muttered Jonas. He felt utterly dazed, and his thoughts refused to align themselves, failing to form any sort of intelligible order.
As Jonas spoke, a man arose from where he had been stooping behind the wreckage of the cabin, furtively dropping some object which he held in his hands, Seeing Jonas, the man came forward hastily. He was a gaunt individual in dirty overalls, with the profile and the general air of a somewhat elderly and dilapidated buzzard. Jonas recognized him as Samuel Slocum, one of his neighbours.
‘Wal, Jonas McGillicuddy, so you’ve come back,’ exclaimed this individual in raucous tones of unfeigned surprise. ‘Ye’re a little too late, though,’ he went on, without pausing to let Jonas speak. ‘Everythin’ burnt up clean, four days ago.’
‘But the cabin wuz here las’ night,’ stammered Jonas. ‘I came through the woods ’bout sunset, an’ I saw Matilda an’ the children in front o’ the steps, jus’ as plain as I see you. Then everythin’ seemed to go up in a burst o’ flame, an’ I didn’t know nothin’ till I woke up jus’ now.’
‘Ye’re crazy, Jonas,’ assured the neighbour. ‘Them weren’t no cabin here las’ night, an’ no Matildy an’ no children, neither. They wuz all burnt up, along with the rest o’ the countery hereabouts. We heerd yer wife an’ babies a-screamin’, but the fire wuzall aroun’ before ye could say Jack Robinson, an’ the trees fell across yer road, an’ no one could git in an’ no one could git out. … I alluz told ye, Jonas, t’ cut them yeller pines down.’
‘My folks wuz all burnt up?’ faltered Jonas.
‘Wal, yer little boy died a year ago, so they wuz jus’ Matildy an’ the two gals,’